LynneC’s review of The Millionaire’s Blackmail Bargain by Heidi Rice
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents 11 Mar 08
In the UK, this was called The Mile High Club. A much better title for this book, far more memorable and distinctive.
Often, when I read an okay book, I decide not to review it, because, honestly, it’s much harder to review a book you don’t either adore or hate. When you love or hate a book, it’s a lot easier to decide why and isolate the bits you loved or hated. With an okay book, you have to think about it a lot more. So here we go.
Jack Devlin is a famous, but anonymous writer. His thrillers have earned him millions. Three of them. I found this difficult to swallow, because even Dan Brown had a fair run of books before he hit it big with “The Da Vinci Code.” But I let it pass.
The heroine works for a gossipy but respectable magazine. She doesn’t like intruding on people’s lives, and she feels uncomfortable digging the dirt, so I’m not at all sure what she’s doing there, except that she needs a job. She doesn’t say that, and she’s not attempting to find anything better, so I didn’t feel enormously sympathetic to her. Her friend Louisa, who seems a more interesting character, persuades her to hide in Jack Devlin’s hotel room at the Ritz, London. I wasn’t sure why, because she’s such a dead loss as a reporter. Louisa would have been better doing it herself. Of course, Jack finds her hiding in his shower. He’s naked, and about to step into it.
I found it hard to believe that a man obsessed with privacy wouldn’t call the hotel management if he found a woman, a reporter, he soon discovers (she’s got Louisa’s reporter’s card – another improbability is that the card is faded and so the photo can’t be made out – these days that would get Louisa sacked or refused entry everywhere).
I think that was the beginning of my problems with this book. I know that Presents/Modern is the fairy tale line and a certain suspension of disbelief is expected, but the improbabilities were piled on too thick, so that by the time Jack and Mel found themselves in bed together, shortly after the encounter in the shower, I’d stopped believing in them.
I didn’t find the hero or heroine particularly firmly drawn. There is a reason for Jack’s anonymity, but since he’s a big alpha male, I don’t know why he didn’t just announce it. He found the razzmatazz that surrounded his “coming out” tedious, but okay, he manages fine. These days, his reason just wasn’t strong enough. It would have added to his publicity. And an author has to do promotions, if he or she wants the big money and the long career. Yes, I know, it could happen, but there were so many “coulds” that my acceptance of them all was stretched to the limit.
Jack was a fun character, but Mel wasn’t. She complained, she worried, she never just kicked back and went with the flow. And she didn’t do anything to improve matters herself. Jack did it all for her. The scene when Jack spent Christmas with her Irish family was fun, though, and here the story started to come alive, but it didn’t last long, as Jack and Mel set off on his book tour. She is supposed to report on it to her boss, but she didn’t want to do it.
The black moment was somewhat lame and contrived, but it didn’t last long, and I could accept it because of that. I didn’t like that Mel chose to walk out on him and he chose to let her. It doesn’t say a lot for talking things through and getting through the rough patches.
The situations were clichéd to the max. Jack is tall, strong, etc and stays at the best hotels. Mel is clingy, whiny and doesn’t have a clue or an aim in life. I think this book was written from a sense of “I’ve got to get this done” rather than any real love for the characters.
But if you want a quick airline read, or something to kill a bit of time while you have a break, this book is fine and probably better than a magazine. Rice has a good style and a great ability to tell a story and, for the most part, pace it right.
Grade: C
Summary:
As a lowly assistant on a magazine, Mel had been roped in to help out a colleague – and now she was about to be caught red-handed! She was hiding in the bath of a hotel suite, and the room’s celebrity occupant, Jack Devlin, had just returned – to have a shower!
The millionaire was dark, brooding and handsome, and the passion that followed was amazing! Now he’d blackmailed her into a tantalizing deal – she would join his luxury, jet-set life for two weeks as his mistress!
Read an excerpt.
